[urbit] Re: [urbit/docs] examples mix keyword stems and runic stems (#83)

[Curtis Yarvin]

Ha ha, you try playing god-emperor sometime. Everybody thinks for some
reason it must be fun. It's no fun being right when everyone else is
wrong, I can tell you that.

hidwes, everything you say is basically true. (Although people who learned
without the keywords *do* say, internally and externally, "barcab" instead
of "door.") This is in general a really insightful comment and reminds me
of the reality that basically, anyone involved with Urbit at this point is
going to be someone who could have invented it, but just accidentally
didn't. I also could have invented it and just accidentally did.

I have said that on balance, the keywords make Hoon a slightly worse
language, because I think it is more righteous to say "barcab" than "door."
On the other hand, you can talk about "a door", the core, but you can't
really talk about "a barcab."

I think of keywords as serving more or less the function of pinyin in
Chinese today. China is not about to throw away its characters and switch
to pinyin, for a lot of excellent reasons. On the other hand, children
learning Chinese (even Chinese children) start with pinyin. When teaching
Hoon, keywords *look* way less hard than runes, even though they're not.
In actual fact, it's not really easier to bind keyword to rune to meaning,
than just rune to meaning.

But it just *looks* easier, from the outside, before you actually try it.
There's something really quite autistic about the pure rune-to-meaning
binding. Anyone can handle it -- but most people don't think they can
handle it. Sadly, marketing matters.

The truth is, nobody likes them but Curtis. But, might I plug
http://urbit.org/fora for discussions? (Sign on at
http://your-ship.urbit.org/ to post under your own name on urbit.org.)
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